Sizing up the schools

What experts say about a radical plan to re-tool the Lansing School District

When Lansing schools’ Superintendent T.C. Wallace took the stage in the auditorium of Eastern High School last Wednesday at a community forum on the recommendations put forth by the Community Advisory Task Force for Right Sizing, he seemed to take the tone of an earnest high school principal. It was like he was addressing an incoming class of freshmen, trying to advise them on the academic journey ahead of them.

And in a way, he was addressing a group of the un-indoctrinated. It just happened to be parents, teachers and students from a range of grades; and he wasn’t talking about locker combinations or study habits, but a set of earthshaking — and perhaps scary — recommendations for the school district that have been put forth by the right-sizing committee.

“It is intended to be a set of recommendations that we consider” — he said with much emphasis on “consider” — “to reshape and reposition the Lansing School District.”

If you attended last Wednesday’s meeting at Eastern, or the one two days prior at Pattengill Middle School, or have seen news reports about the committee’s recommendations, you’re probably familiar with some of the juicier, headlinegrabbing bits: closing Moores Park Elementary and either Woodcreek, Wainwright or Riddle Elementary by the beginning of the next school year; eventually closing 10 to 13 more elementary schools, to be replaced by a large new elementary school in each quadrant of Lansing; closing two high schools, to be replaced with one new high school; placing an academy for ninth-grade students in an existing high school; and creating a “strict discipline” school, which would not be operated by the district, to capture expelled or otherwise behaviorally challenged students.

The parts of the plan that involve school closings and financing the construction of new schools — which would involve the dreaded, politically dangerous “bond issue" — are getting the most attention. But taken as a whole, the plan is a broad rethinking of the entire school system because it seems to address the many problems that the LSD is faced with: a steady historical and projected decline in enrollment (which means less money per student), a palette of aging buildings, the failure of the high schools for the last six years to meet adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind standards, increasing legacy costs for retired teachers, and on and on.

The wonkier recommendations in the plan, however, are just as important as the school closings and potential new millages. The recommendation to align curriculum horizontally and vertically (which was last done almost 10 years ago) might be overlooked because it sounds like jargon.

Aligning curriculum horizontally means making is to make sure that students in, for example, a physics class are also enrolled in a math class that would allow them to comprehend physics. And to align vertically is to ensure that students take physics only after excelling in prerequisite classes. And maybe the prospect of building new schools wouldn’t be so scary if the recommendation of seeking extreme philanthropic funds, from, say, Eli Broad or Bill and Melinda Gates, were paid more attention.

Pick an urban school district in America and you’ll likely see a situation similar to Lansing: declining enrollment, failure to meet federal standards, etc. But, say experts, a lot of schools districts aren’t rethinking the entire package. A high school is restructured here, or a few middle schools are shaken up there and great changes are expected. But piecemeal changes usually fall flat.

“Flint is going through similar changes, Cleveland has done something similar,” says Sharif Shakrani, co-director of the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University. “Many places are going through rethinking about how they deliver K-12 education. The ones that aren’t being successful are the ones that only key in on one level.”

In trying to find out whether the right-sizing committee’s recommendations have weight or are useless, City Pulse passed the report around to education experts around the country like Shakrani and asked them their opinion. The plan received high marks for its gumption in wanting to reshape the entire district, not just a few pieces — if there’s a time to change the way we run our public schools in Lansing and across the country, now is the time, the experts said — but also received remarks of caution because of its gumption.

Caution

After Wallace gave his remarks last Wednesday, former Lansing Mayor David Hollister took the stage to, again, present the committee recommendations.

Hollister, along with former state education official Don Weatherspoon and Michigan State University professor Ruben Martinez, head of the university’s Julian Samora Research Institute, were the report’s three chiefs. One hundred and six members of the community, including the entire Lansing Board of Education, joined them in creating the plan.

Hollister’s explanation of the plan was detailed, perhaps a little too much. He took the better part of half an hour to explain it (the community forum was scheduled to be two hours), and the anxiousness of the crowd to comment was evident — toward the end, a woman in the crowd began to urgently wave her hand in the air like an elementary school student trying to get permission to go to the bathroom.

Further, it seemed that some of Hollister’s explanations went over the heads of some in the community: One of the first people to speak during the public comment section of the meeting asked, very pointedly, “Which high schools are you going to close?”

Former school board member Denise Chrysler, who left the board in 2003, said that the issue of closing schools is especially tough for parents and may in fact be the impetus for some parents’ taking their children out of schools.

“Elementary schools are glue in the neighborhoods,” Chrysler said. “The community gets up in arms about closing schools. But who in the community is going to step forward to pay the price of operating schools that are under-enrolled?” she said.

Shakrani says that communicating the recommendations to parents is going to be one of the biggest hurdles. The message delivered with all the plan’s gumption is that change like this is urgently needed — which both Hollister and Wallace touched on in their talks Wednesday and in past.

The school district “needs to tell parents that the plan is aimed at improving the schools, not shuffling the kids to different schools. “That should be the crux of communication with parents,” he said.

Jonathan Plucker, a professor of educational psychology at Indiana University, says much the same.

The school district is “falling on its sword and saying, ‘we acknowledge that there are problems andsaying we’re going to do something about it,’” Plucker said. “They’renot doing this just to piss people off. They’re doing this to make amuch better school district. Plucker’s advice is to reach out tocommunity leaders to sell the plan, which has apparently been done byHollister in several public presentations and the large group ofcommunity members involved in the plan.

“If it’s the best plan in theworld, people are still going to be upset by it,” Plucker said. “It hasto be a community effort to sell this plan.”

But good PR, of course,isn’t the only hurdle. Shakrani — who is actually involved in the plan,helping to construct achievement guidelines for teachers and studentsin the district — is precise in his critique. Shakrani questions thecost of building entirely new buildings and whether it would be cheaperto renovate old ones. Reliance on federal stimulus funds being madeavailable might be shortsighted, because the money will be around foronly two years. The district should focus on getting a piece of the $25billion in discretionary funds that have been given to U.S. Departmentof Education Secretary Arne Duncan, he said.

Shakrani also says that asmuch as there is a focus on building new buildings, there should be oneon making sure the curriculum is just as fresh.

“There has tobe tangible change in curriculum instruction and program offering,” hesaid. “Infrastructure alone is not going to bring about change.Improving the quality of education reduces the number of exitingstudents; it eliminates the reason they leave because of quality ofeducation.”

Plucker says that all the organizational change inthe plan simply must be matched with better teaching. He pointed to thehorizontal and vertical alignment of curriculum and the ninth gradeacademy (ninth grade because that is the grade in which students aremost likely to drop out of school) as good examples of efforts atbetter instruction.

“If classroom instruction doesn’t change,then all the organizational changes will have no effect. If the sameteaching is going on, then why would we expect student outcomes to bedifferent?” he said.

Maris Vinovskis, a professor of public policy atthe University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, anda former assistant secretary of the U.S. Office of Educational Researchand Improvement in both the first Bush and Clinton administrations,warned of the importance of considering not only racial integration inthe school, but also eco nomic integration.

The report pointsto a “misalignment between school cultures and student demographics,”and goes on to explain that Lansing has “experienced a demographicshift which transformed it from a white-majority to a minority-majorityschool district.” The report recommends a focus on a “multiculturalorganizational culture.”

“Studies show economic integration isvery important,” Vinovskis said. “They don’t seem to pay much attentionto that. The reason they need to is that disadvantaged students benefitfrom being in the same class as students who are better offeconomically. Since they’re going to have to close down a lot ofelementary schools, they could think about realigning the district tomaintain the economic integration.”

Magnet schools help with economicintegration, Vinovskis said, but wasn’t sure that the plan did enoughto encourage more affluent students to stay in the district.

Pluckeralso pointed out that there wasn’t much in the plan to back up thedistrict’s desire to align school culture with the community culture.

“Howdo you do that?” he said. “They never come back to that; its sort of,‘this is a problem, we’re going to focus on organizational stuff:building new buildings, new programs.’ But that doesn’t changeculture.”

Vinovskis also predicts that No Child Left Behind will verysoon change, not only in name but also in its standards. Whilethe school district wouldn’t be able to shirk the standards, it mightbuy some time in preparing the school system to meet an updated versionof the law.

Jerry Swartz, head of the Lansing teachers union, offerscriticism of the right-sizing plan because he says the district isalready implementing many of the ideas put forth in it, includingseeking philanthropic funds and aligning curriculum.

“We’re treatingthe Lansing School District as abysmal and struggling, but thatcouldn’t be further from the truth,” he said.

One recommendation seeksto implement “rigid accountability measures” for teachers andadministrators, and another part seeks to create more wiggle room forthe district in teachers’ contract for more accountability, which mightimpact teacher union/district relations. Swartz is also upset that thecommunity forum at Pattengill two Monday’s ago was shutdown as teacherswere still giving views on the plan.

“The (teaching) staff has not beeninformed or invited to be part of this conversation,” Swartz says.

There should be more transparency in the plan if the 1,700 teachers inthe district are expected to be brought into the fold, he said.

The positives

JackJennings, president of the Washington-based Center on Education Policy,an education advocacy think tank, immediately called the plan “bold andthoughtful.”

“Generally, school districts lurch from crisis tocrisis,” Jennings said. “Therefore ,their plans tend to be in the shortterm. This is a long-term plan, and it’s a plan that deals with allaspects of the school system, not just with finances; it’s bold.”

Theidea to turn all Lansing high and middle schools into Title 1schools (federal Title 1 money is given to schools that under-performon standardized tests and is meant to improve academics) is goodbecause the pot of money just grew by 70 percent.

The idea of creatinga discipline academy is good because it would be meant to catch at-riskstudents.

“Their visionhas to be subject to debate,” Jennings said, noting that the plan’s“Achilles’ heel” is asking taxpayers for money to build new schools inthis economic climate.” “But it’s certainly a wonderful beginning.”

Jenningssaid his organization has studied several school districts in Michigan.Most comparable to Lansing would be Flint, he said, but that schoolsystem has only sought to restructure middle schools and createspecialized academies.

Flint “might be somewhat comparable.But I don’t think they have a plan as comprehensive as this,” he said.

But a plan like this is needed in a place like Lansingbecause the world is changing. It was once where a high school graduatecould walk into a job at General Motors Corp. and make a good living.But that’s not longer a reality, Shakrani said.

“Basically, the plan isbased on the reality of the funding available to the district, which isa function of how many students it has,” he said. “If that drops, theycan’t maintain the same level of educational programs.”

Andthe funding level, which is tied directly to the number of students inthe district, is dire. Hollister has said that if something is not doneto stem the students leaving the district, then Lansing could hollowout to a K-6 district. According to the right-sizing team’s“assumptions,” the district is predicted to bottom out at around 12,500students. The district is hovering at just under 15,000 students, downfrom nearly 26,000 in 1984.

“What I do see is a willingness to face upto hard questions and do some hard thinking,” Vinovskis said. “This isthe beginning of a serious dialogue that needs to take place. Thesuperintendent should further that dialogue.”

Plucker givesthe plan an “A” for its organizational changes.

“It’s clear that theLansing School District is very different than it was a few years ago,”Plucker said. “It’s a very different-sized school district. But itappears to be roughly organized the way it always has. And it has tochange.”

The best changes, says Plucker, will beinstructional, pointing to the 9th grade academy and the “middlecollege,” which would allow high school students to complete collegecourses.

Wallace was supposed to make his recommendations ofthe right-sizing committee’s recommendations to the school board at aspecial March 26 meeting. However, Wallace rescheduled thatmeeting for April 6, at which time he will also make recommendationsfor possible school closures. Wallace said in a statement that herescheduled the meeting to be “thorough, deliberative and responsive”to all the public input on the plan.

“It is clear that this transparentand public process has engaged the entire school district community andbeyond, especially given the scope and magnitude of [the right-sizingcommittee’s] bold and far reaching recommendations,” Wallace said inthe statement.

Attempts to reach Wallace for comment on whichrecommendations — or maybe all of them — he’s leaning toward were notreturned. The school district also did not respond to a request to tourMoores Park Elementary.

For Chrysler, she’s glad she’s nolonger on the board. Closing schools, she said, was the most painfulexperience she had while serving and decided not to run again becauseshe was discouraged by the leadership.

“I’m troubled by theuse of the term ’right-sizing,’” she said. “I don’t think that anythingthat calls for closing schools should be considered right-sizing. Itshould be necessary and regrettable, but there’s nothing right aboutit.

“I’m not able to give it a grade. But it helps to have freshperspective. Any task force that brings in new minds and viewpointsfrom outside the school district is essential.”

’If it’s the best plan in the world, people are still going to beupset by it. It has to be a community effort to sell this plan.’ - Jonathan Plucker, professor of education, Indiana University